Captain Rangana Herath was in business early on day 5 as he picked up the remaining 3 wickets to wrap up the match and with it a series whitewash against Zimbabwe in Harare.
Craig Ervine and Tino Mawoyo resumed Zimbabwe’s second innings on 180 for 7 with defeat looking inevitable.
Suranga Lakmal began with the ball for Sri Lanka along with Rangana Herath on the 5th Morning at Harare. Rangana Herath was in business in the 6th over of the day as he managed to dismiss Craig Ervine for 75 runs as the batsman was caught at slip by Dhananjaya De Silva.
Herath was on the money again, in his very next over as he trapped Carl Mumba for a single run. Mumba missed the flat delivery that skidded on and struck him plumb in front as the end was approaching fast on Zimbabwe.
The last pair of Zimbabwe did not defend as they took the attack to the bowlers scoring 32 in 29 balls. The inevitable end came upon Zimbabwe as Rangana Herath caught Christopher Mpofu in front for 20 in 16 balls. Rangana Herath bagged all three wickets on day 5 as he ended with figures of 8 for 63 and 13 wickets in the match, the best figures recorded in Zimababwe.
Herath ended with 19 wickets from 2 matches and recorded the most wickets by a Captain in a two match series, beating Courtney Walsh and Shaun Pollock’s record of 16 scalps. Herath’s counterpart, Graeme Cremer took 11 wickets with his right-arm leg-spinners for the hosts.
This is only the second occasion where Sri Lanka have won 5 or more Test matches in a row, the other instance being in 2001/02 where they won 9 games in a row under the captaincy of Sanath Jayasuriya.
Earlier in the series, Sri Lanka won the first Test match by 225 runs with Upul Tharanga, Dimuth Karunaratne and Kusal Perera recording 110 each.
Dimuth Karunarathne won the man of the series award after scoring a century and two half-centuries to top the batting leaderboard with 280 runs followed by Dhananjaya De Silva (225 runs), Asela Gunarathne (225 runs) and Upul Tharanga (207).
With this 2-nil win Sri Lanka gained one point in the ICC Test Team Rankings to reach 96 points and maintain their 6th position while Zimbabwe lost three points and now have just 5 points.
The ODI tri-series which involves Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and West Indies will start on the 14th November.
